1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to surgical instruments and, more particularly, to systems and methods for credit-based usage of surgical instruments and components thereof.
2. Background of Related Art
Surgical instruments may be generally classified as single-use instruments, reusable instruments, partially-reusable instruments (where one or more components are configured for single use and one or more other components are configured for reuse), or limited-use instruments (or limited-use components). Such limited-use instruments or components are classified as such because these instruments or components define useful lives, that is, a period during which use of the instruments or components is determined to be safe and effective. The useful life of a particular instrument or component is typically determined by testing and/or modeling that reflects the effects of the surgical environment on the instrument or component, stresses imparted to or by the instrument or component during use, the impact of sterilization processes on the instrument or component, and/or the normal wear and tear resulting from reuse of the instrument or component. The useful life of an instrument or component may be measured against one or more metrics such as: time from manufacturing, time in actual use, time undergoing sterilization, number of activations, number of procedures, number of sterilizations, number of charge cycles, etc.
Historically, clinicians were required to know (or determine) the useful life of an instrument or component, track usage in accordance therewith, and retire the instrument or component once its useful life had been reached. With the advent of intelligent instruments and components, manual use-tracking by the clinician has been replaced by the manufacturer programming the instrument or component to measure the useful life thereof and disable functionality (partially or fully) when the useful life has been reached.
The useful life of a particular instrument or component may also be helpful in considering the economics of purchasing a particular instrument, e.g., a price-per-procedure value can be determined. On the manufacturer's side, increased prices resulting from the additional costs associated with increasing the usable life of an instrument or component are more easily justified when viewed in a price-per-procedure context.